Here is quite possibly the coolest new tool for bands and musicians to make money with music work since the beginning of time. Ok maybe I'm being a little crazy but it looks pretty damn good.

The tool is Drip.FM and here is a description of what they do in their own words:

“With drip.fm, music fans pay a subscription fee to get your content delivered to their inbox. You choose how often to deliver and how much to charge. It's that easy.”

I've been wanting to try a subscription model for my own music for some time now but everything out there was either to clunky, to expensive or just not very musician friendly. This looks very promising and I can't wait to give it a whirl.

The pages – like this one for Fools Gold  - kind of have a Bandcamp vibe (and clean is good).

Party Pooper

If there one negative to the whole thing I would say it is that you are sending your fans away from your site, which always makes me a little uneasy. Always nice to keep people in house.

Also, it will be interesting to see how they manage and integrate with email providers like Aweber, Mailchimp, Fanbridge or others. Always sucks to add yet another list or database to keep track of.

Wish List

One wish list item would be to allow for a few different levels of subscription- three would be ideal. I don't want to make it complicated but giving people the chance to pay more is always a good thing.

Also, when there are a few options available, it was been proven that people tend to purchase the middle tier product when presented with 3 options. Lets say you have a 5, 10 and 15, more people will generally go for the 10, which if you are only offer 5, you are missing out (see Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive for more on that).

More To Come

The service hasn't been fully launched quite yet – only a few labels are allowed behind the curtain so far – but you can enter your email and they will let you know when they are ready.

What do you think of this new service? Will you use it?